- OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar identifies Cybersecurity as a major growth driver, with the business split evenly between consumer and enterprise customers.
- Friar pushes back on ROI concerns, citing Cisco engineers saving 1,500 hours per month through AI tools.
- European firms trail in agentic AI adoption, but weekly active users of ChatGPT Work and Codex among EU small and medium businesses rose 8.1 times since May.
- OpenAI is holding back a next-generation model for additional safety work, without a major shift in computing resources toward safety.
OpenAI Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar, speaking at the International AI Summit in Dublin on Wednesday, identified cybersecurity as a potential major growth area for the company. She told Bloomberg Television that the business is roughly evenly split between consumer and enterprise, with revenue coming from subscriptions and usage-based services.
Friar said cybersecurity will be “a big driver of our business,” and also pointed to consumer advertising as an emerging opportunity. She declined to provide a revenue forecast.
Analysts are increasingly focused on the AI-cybersecurity nexus. Morgan Stanley analyst Meta Marshall estimated in September that AI agents could help more than double the identity-security market to $60 billion over the next two years, driven by demand for managing enterprise system access.
Wedbush, according to Investing.com, said cybersecurity budgets are being redistributed rather than expanded, with spending increasingly concentrated among broader security platforms.
Regarding questions about AI’s return on investment, Friar pushed back, citing Cisco engineers saving 1,500 hours per month and faster progress on the company’s development roadmap. She reiterated that OpenAI is holding back a next-generation model for additional safety and alignment work, clarifying that this does not represent a major shift in computing resources toward safety.
European firms are expanding agentic AI usage, though the region trails in adoption. OpenAI research released Wednesday showed that Codex and ChatGPT Work accounted for more than half of output tokens among EU enterprise customers in its sample, and weekly active users among EU small and medium businesses increased 8.1 times since May.
However, EU-based firms accounted for only 10% of the top 10% of firms globally ranked by output tokens per active user. Growing concerns about AI-related security risks have helped draw investor interest to cybersecurity stocks, with Okta leading gains at roughly 170% year to date, followed by Fortinet up 130%, CrowdStrike up 114%, Palo Alto Networks up 121%, and SentinelOne up 64%.
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